


Forty-One

by chainofclovers



Category: Doubt (film)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-05-05
Updated: 2009-05-05
Packaged: 2017-10-15 00:34:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/155231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chainofclovers/pseuds/chainofclovers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>This fic has been in my head for a little while now, but the writing of it was prompted by the drabble meme that's been going around. <a href="http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/"><b>somniesperus</b></a> and <a href="http://la-fono.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://la-fono.livejournal.com/"><b>la_fono</b></a> both requested <i>Doubt</i> drabbles (about "love" and "why" respectively), and I decided to write a short story instead. I'll hopefully get around to writing the drabbles eventually, but in the meantime I hope you're okay with sharing 1,500 words instead of getting 100 of your own. This story is dedicated to both of you, and to <a href="http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/profile"><img/></a><a href="http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/"><b>pin_drop</b></a> who recently wrote about Gethsemane and who talks to me about dreams!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Forty-One

**Author's Note:**

> This fic has been in my head for a little while now, but the writing of it was prompted by the drabble meme that's been going around. [](http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/profile)[**somniesperus**](http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/) and [](http://la-fono.livejournal.com/profile)[**la_fono**](http://la-fono.livejournal.com/) both requested _Doubt_ drabbles (about "love" and "why" respectively), and I decided to write a short story instead. I'll hopefully get around to writing the drabbles eventually, but in the meantime I hope you're okay with sharing 1,500 words instead of getting 100 of your own. This story is dedicated to both of you, and to [](http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/profile)[**pin_drop**](http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/) who recently wrote about Gethsemane and who talks to me about dreams!

  
  
  
  
**Entry tags:**   
|   
[doubt](http://chainofclovers.livejournal.com/tag/doubt), [fic](http://chainofclovers.livejournal.com/tag/fic)  
  
---|---  
  
Title: Forty-One  
Fandom: _Doubt_ (film)  
Pairing: Sister James/Sister Aloysius  
Rating: PG-13  
Disclaimer: I have no rights where _Doubt_ is concerned. John Patrick Shanley wrote _Doubt_ and his words humble me.  
Author's Note: This fic has been in my head for a little while now, but the writing of it was prompted by the drabble meme that's been going around. [](http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/profile)[**somniesperus**](http://somniesperus.livejournal.com/) and [](http://la-fono.livejournal.com/profile)[**la_fono**](http://la-fono.livejournal.com/) both requested _Doubt_ drabbles (about "love" and "why" respectively), and I decided to write a short story instead. I'll hopefully get around to writing the drabbles eventually, but in the meantime I hope you're okay with sharing 1,500 words instead of getting 100 of your own. This story is dedicated to both of you, and to [](http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/profile)[**pin_drop**](http://pin-drop.livejournal.com/) who recently wrote about Gethsemane and who talks to me about dreams!

 _March 3_

Sister James gives up snacking and gossip for Lent; Sister Aloysius gives up Sister James.

She informs Sister James of this on Ash Wednesday. They’re sitting on their bench, appropriately enough, and though evening Mass has already happened the sun is only now sinking behind the trees and endless brick buildings that block out the horizon.

“If anyone asks, I gave up sugar,” Sister Aloysius says, just after she stands to go back inside. She looks over her shoulder, as if to give Sister James opportunity to speak, but neither of them say anything. The ashen cross on her forehead makes her look even more stern than usual, but Sister James wonders if she’s joking—about the sugar, that is, and about the idea that someone else in the order might dare to question her Lenten devotions. She certainly hadn’t been teasing when she explained—rather stiltedly, almost shakily—that their friendship was “unhealthy” and “improper.” That a break will do them both good. Of course Sister James has no choice in the matter, doesn’t get the chance to say whether or not she’d like to be given up.

Sister James sits stunned for the better part of a half-hour, rising from the bench only when the sun is so low that the air becomes cold. She has always loved early March, the first hints of winter’s predictable but fantastic weakening. This winter has been particularly unsettling, and she can’t wait to feel it disappear. She had been about to say as much when Sister Aloysius started talking instead.

It occurs to her, as she makes her way toward her room, that perhaps she should be flattered. People are supposed to give up things they’d prefer to keep around: Lent is intended to be difficult, a preparation for Christ’s ultimate suffering, for redemption. Sister Aloysius doesn’t have much of a sweet tooth, but her dependence on Sister James (for a listening ear, companionship, the compassion she refuses to admit she needs) has started to become obvious. Sister James tries to avoid thinking about how people—if they really want to do Lent right—give up what they love, or more specifically what they love even though they shouldn’t. She doesn’t think she wants to be someone’s sin, a guilt that must be purged.

\--

 _March 26_

Forty days last a long time, and forty nights even longer. They don’t even count Sundays, although Sundays in Lent drag on, not at all like miniature Easters. The nights notwithstanding, Sister James and Sister Aloysius see each other about as much as they ever did. They work together, dine together, live together, and Lent changes very little about their schedules.

Twenty days in, Sister James wakes up thinking, _Halfway there. Halfway there. Halfway there._ The thought doesn’t scare her, but the urgent momentum behind it does. Halfway to what? It’s entirely possible Sister Aloysius is so relieved by their separation that nothing will start back up between them when the Lenten season ends. She certainly doesn’t miss the sugar, which she’s given up for form’s sake, and Sister James has realized that she herself never spent quite as much time gossiping as she thought. The order has been entirely close-lipped about Father Flynn’s departure, which already feels distant, and Father Sullivan is so boring that she sometimes thinks the Lord must have picked him to punish them for stirring up trouble. Not, of course, that the trouble is entirely regrettable.

 _Halfway there_ , and not halfway back to gossip or snacks or sugary tea, either. She’s nervous at the front of her classroom for the first time since she got back from visiting her family, and William London is back-talking her right as Sister Aloysius walks in to observe. Humiliated, she stutters through the rest of her lesson, and feels painfully young.

At the end of the school day, Aloysius walks past the small school chapel that hardly ever gets used anymore, and sees Sister James sitting alone, staring straight at the crucifix. There are three pews in the chapel, but Aloysius sits down right next to her. They look at each other, saying nothing, and Sister Aloysius strokes the back of Sister James’ hand with her fingers. She gets up immediately after that, and they don’t talk at all for two days. Sister James stays in the chapel a few minutes longer. She realizes she is a temptation, and the thought makes her smile.

“I broke a promise,” Sister Aloysius says the next time she Confesses, and lies when prompted to elaborate. She imagines Mary sitting with the priest in the other side of the booth, and silently confesses the lie to her, wants to tell her everything.

“I struggle with vanity,” Sister James says in the same booth, and smiles again. At least no one can see her.

The weather gets calmer. Theoretically the quieting of the storms should allow Sister James to sleep better, but she often wakes up in the middle of the night, her thoughts and heart racing from her dreams.

She dreams about the beginning, when Sister Aloysius got sick soon after Father Flynn left. Influenza, probably, and it was odd that Sister James was one of the few who didn’t get it, considering how much time she spent at Aloysius’ bedside.

When she started taking care of her—a task the other nuns relinquished quite willingly—she remembered Sister Aloysius crying in the snow just a few days earlier, and had whispered, “We spent a lot of time out in the cold.”

“That isn’t why a person gets sick,” Aloysius replied, her voice hoarse and far away.

She tells herself over and over that the first time she fell asleep in Sister Aloysius’ room was an accident, though its repetitions weren’t accidental at all. Now, wrapped up in March and Lent and forced distance, she dreams most frequently about the night she woke up to find Aloysius nestled against her in what was finally a deep sleep, an arm draped around her midsection, a hand possessively sprawled against her abdomen.

It is impossible for her to forget how she felt in that moment, realizing she had in that strange scene exactly what she wanted. She’d laid awake for over an hour that night, playacting a fatherless family—a family that didn’t even have a real baby—and willed Sister Aloysius to stay asleep so she wouldn’t see her tears. She had decided then to reserve her guilt for that moment. Everything after that awful fantasy would pale in comparison. It was easy, after that, to hold hands with each other instead of with themselves in prayer, to sleep in the same bed but to start out the night as far apart as the mattress would allow.

Now, in this springtime that is far less warm than a fever in January, Sister James is solitary but has already had so much of another person that she cannot be alone. She throws herself into preparations for Easter, takes pleasure in reading Matthew, the pages yet to come.

\--

 _April 18_

There’s the chance to get a few hours’ sleep after Midnight Mass on Easter morning. Sister James waits until the hallway is quiet, until she’s sure everyone is settled into their beds for what’s left of the night, before she sneaks to Sister Aloysius’ room. She knocks very softly on the door, and the immediate, almost resigned “Yes?” tells her that she isn’t an entirely unexpected visitor.

“Happy Easter, Sister,” she says to Aloysius, who is sitting up, not in bed but on top of it. The covers are neatly folded, and the room is dark save for streaks of milky light coming in through the parted curtains. Some of the light lands on the rosary in Sister Aloysius’ hands, but Sister James doesn’t think she’s interrupted a prayer.

“He isn’t risen yet,” Sister Aloysius says, but she scoots over to make room on the bed designed to fit one person. They’ve already had the Vigil, so the accuracy of her statement is debatable. Actually, Sister James has always imagined that He pushed aside the rock right about now, with plenty of darkness left, but she knows what Aloysius means.

They haven’t been this close in proximity for twenty days, or close in this exact way for just over forty. Overcome, Sister James leans in and kisses Sister Aloysius. They have never done this. The kiss is close-mouthed, brief, nearly safe.

Aloysius gasps a little, and says, “You don’t get poisoned, do you?”

There isn’t anything to say to that, so they kiss again. It’s the same kind of kiss, but there is time enough in this one to realize that it is good, or, perhaps more precisely, to realize how good it feels.

They don’t fall asleep that night, or even lie down. It isn’t healthy to deprive oneself of sleep, but this is like Gethsemane, a few days late. Sister James thinks of flowers and painted eggs and little girls in lacy pastel dresses, all the lovely things they will see in just a few hours. Things she adores and will never have. Has chosen not to have. Still, she is happy, here in this moment. Sister Aloysius thinks of the buttons on Sister James’ nightgown, how she could reach over and undo them one by one. She is not unhappy to think of this. They stay very still, and when the sun rises, they are looking at it together.


End file.
